Star Wars Imperial Assault: Elite Probe Droid (Jewel of July ’18)

Today’s post is another Star Wars one. We started playing Imperial Assault last week, and while we only got through the intro and first missions, it was quite a bit of fun. One of the enemies that the GM (Overlord? whatever) had in both missions was the Elite version of the Imperial Probe Droid. At the time, I didn’t know where my figures were, as the original three in my IA set were all (yes, all) broken, and FFG had sent me one as a replacement (which has been moved from its place on my desk). So we just used a Terminator model instead. Sure, wrong franchise, but it worked for game purposes.

I noticed in images online that the Probe Droids have a fair few markings on them in a burnt orange, so I attempted to replicate the feel of those. The sculpt isn’t 100% accurate, so I couldn’t make the markings 100%, but the overall look and feel is pretty good.

As with the Royal Guard, as an Elite mob I added the Imperial Cog to the model’s base. To make it even more obvious on the table, I chose to paint the main “eye” lens of the droid with a glossy red instead of the black. While I do think the cold black looks a bit better/more menacing as it gives off an alien or insectoid feel, it’ll make an easy point of differentiation combines with the cog, without doing something like red base rims.

After painting this guy last weekend, I spent way too long searching for the three broken ones, as I’ll attempt to repair/rebase them. Then on Monday the other two replacements arrived in the post, so I may have a few ready to go shortly. Assuming the next mission also makes use of the Probe Droid, this guy will make his tabletop debut in two nights’ time…

No post yesterday – when I got home from work there was no internet, no phone, no cable TV – so expect a few more in a row while I catch up. Oh, and lastly. Does a Probe Droid count for Jewel of July? At first I thought no, but then I thought.. actually maybe. These three criteria are the relevant ones to consider – as it’s sort of a low-level hero/mechanical monster as opposed to a “proper” hero or villain or a huge mech. Like a minor ogre hero in an RPG:

It’s for Heroes. Big or small. named or otherwise. A Lieutenant or a Medic or a Warlord Riding a Dragon. An Inquisitor’s aide or a Star Player or a Bounty Hunter.

It’s for Monsters. Ogres or Ogors. Dragons, Giants, decent-sized Daemons. Bronze Bulls and Dinosaurs and Great Wight Sharks and Goremaw and Cthulhu.

Nice work. How do you achieve that white highlighting on the black metal? I should have picked up those plastic Star Wars toy soldiers they had at Target a few years ago. When I think about it now, they probably would have looked really nice painted.

Edge of the brush with a silver paint is the short answer. The longer answer is by loosely following Soastro’s YouTube paining guide:
You could probably still pick up Star Wars toy soldiers that would have been in wide Target distribution without too much trouble, I’d guess?

Yea, that’s got to be the best Probe Droid I’ve seen. I didn’t even notice that the eye is the ‘wrong color’. Red and black are pretty common Empire colors, so I think he blends in pretty well. I imagine if he was inside, he’d probably show up with a red eye anyways. I think I would want to hike him up on a flight pole though.

The way I’ve interpreted the “Jewel of July” challenge is something that has been painted quite nicely and stands out a bit. This one certainly is painted quite nice! Sadly, the fates (hot weather and more house guests this weekend!) have conspired against me completing any July challenge. I’d have to slap dash something together the last weekend of July. Maybe, maybe.

Thanks mate – though they’re not exactly a common mini sight, so it’s probably not that hard. 😉
I’m going to keep this one on his standard base, as well as the two other replacements, and yeah – try out the flight stand rebasing with the ones that were broken out of the box and see how they turn out.
With the Jewel Challenge. I just didn’t think of this thing as something that counted until Marouda asked me the other day. I said “nope” but then started kinda thinking about it…
So it’s agreed then – last weekend of July you’ll get something done over those two days. Cool – set in stone!

Hey, they’re good-quality boardgame models, not expensive Citadel Miniatures – designed to come out of the box and be used immediately. I imagine that they’d be easy enough to cut off and remount – as mentioned, mine were already broken to lesser and greater degrees – but until I got to the point of deciding to paint them, I just wanted to be able to use them in a game without any dicking around.
They are a cool design, though!

Very few of our boardgames have painted minis. The Pieces for Relic and i think the Chubacca from imperial assault. The droid looks great and makes me want to paint up some more of my brother’s imperial assault minis. Since its kind of like a boss i woukd say it qualifies. I assumed by your original, quite broad perameters that it was any sort of noteworthy model or unit that drew people’s attention for its appearance or status. So i think your Droid qualifies, not sure about my thing though. My Warp Talons are taking ages so they wont be ready, but i was thinking of getting My Norris Thing Possessed ready. Its very iconic and was a lot of work but it is at the end of the day… A single possessed space marine! Maybe i should try to paint up another hero mini from imperial assault…

Yeah, the thing with board game minis is that there’s so bloody many of them! What got me thinking about these was a post on Luke’s Start Your Meeples blog where he talked about Imperial Assault, and I saw those Emperor’s Royal Guard and it clicked as to how quick and easy they would be to paint.https://startyourmeeples.com/2018/05/23/what-is-star-wars-imperial-assault-like/
I’ve painted a bunch of Zombicide Survivors, a bit from Conan, and the odd other BG figure – a fair few Shadows of Brimstone models lately, though they’re multipart HIPS and so unusable without building them. A big motivator for my choices as to which ones to paint are going to be (relatively) quick and easy, and which will have use across other games. Scatter terrain does well in this category.
As for your possessed…. could he *also* be used as an Aspiring Champion?

Ha ha ha, I wish i could lie and say… Yeaaahhh… He is… Ascending. But he is too much of a mess to be a champion, my friends keep saying he is basically a spawn, so actually about a no-name as ypu can get! The trouble is… If the game was The Thing, he would be the end boss! Instead though in the actual context of the game he is a homage i am very proud of that will count as an elite but singular model belonging to a unit. Im so close to finishing him, what i might do i is do a post for him but also try to do my character from imperial assault, the (Twilek?) Trainee Jedi and post that one… Then you can decide which one deserves the spotlight more ; )

I’ll try to paint that one up too than, if i dont try to fulfull your wish then whats the point in my trying to motivate myself with the blog! Yeah a lot of the Possessed as so messed up i will also use them as spawn, as ime doing ones from different chapters it will be fun to spawnify someones character and replace them with one of my possessed models of the right colours. 😁

Well, Spawn are single-character-minor-monster models, so they’ll all count. Remember – these challenges are essentially about “I want to finish/paint that thing – how can I justify it this month and therefore help to motivate myself to complete it?” with (hopefully) just enough rules/guidelines to *not* make every month a total free-for-all and therefore boring and not matter.

Nice droid. Apparently this WAS the droid he was looking for after all. It seems to me that you set up the Jewel of July to be pretty much any model that the painter thinks is nice and tried to paint nicely would count, so put me down for a yes vote.

To an extent that’s true. The rationale was that Decembruary was about the big heroes and the centrepieces – which is what this one was also going to be about – but then I realised that (especially in wargaming) we have all of these minor characters and minor heroes and single models as well that don’t fit the big bombastic hero mould, nor are they part of squads. Apothecaries, interesting ogres and trolls that would be fielded in a unit, a motorcycle with sidecar.
But, like, a single stormtrooper would still not count because they should have some friends alongside.

Got it, that makes it a little more narrow. Given the general utility of such a miniatures, I’d say it would still count. If, on the other hand, it were being painted just to be a proxy for a Tau drone then it probably wouldn’t count. Fortunately as I said before, this IS the drone we are looking for!

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